Saturday

Feb. 18

BICKETT GALLERY--Genre tags are music's venereal diseases. Sometimes, bands sleep together--that is, they may share stages, labels, equipment, members or MySpace friends--and suddenly one picks up the topical infection of another. Take Nethers, a Washington, D.C., band that takes four-fifths of Carlsonics--a swishing-swashing punk band since departed--and makes pastoral pop washed in tremolo guitars, slow-train drum tracks and keyboard pedal points. Yet, it's difficult at best finding a review that doesn't call them a freak-folk band easing down the same crowded, Birkenstock-but-not avenue as Devendra Banhart, Akron/Family and Joanna Newsom. It's certainly simple, major-chord, somewhat acoustic music rich in naturalistic images and relatively free of discord, but the reductionist freak-folk tag is an itch worthy of being sloughed off. Asheville's Ahleuchatistas--fast, frenzied math equations that pierce and swallow--should be the Sparks jolt to Nethers' herb reverie. --Grayson Currin

Carrboro

Gates of Heaven

carrboro century center--Once upon a time Errol Morris, the professorial, provocative and unpredictable documentary maker, was an unknown filmmaker. Morris' career as a provocative and unpredictable documentary maker began in 1980 with Gates of Heaven. In this instant cult classic, Morris profiles pet burial practices in Napa Valley, Calif. The pets are preceded by The Art of Peg Gignoux by local filmmaker Erica Rothman at 7 p.m. The $3 cost includes popcorn and soda. --David Fellerath